EVE New Citizens Q&A

Faction Warfare!

This is really easy to get into as a new player and in a Frigate or Destroyer you can make a real difference, get some great fights and earn an absolute fortune - with a bit of patience and forward planning.

It is all in the new FW plexing mechanism. In order to dock in a low sec FW system, your faction needs to own the system. To take control of the system requires you to run Offensive plexes, a lot of them, get the system to 100% contested, then get a big fleet up and kill the Infastructure Hub.

Don't worry about the last bit as a new player, your alliance leaders will sort that bit out. All you have to do is run the plexes. There are four types, Minor, Medium/standard, Major (restricted) and Major (unrestricted).

Let us concentrate on the Minor. The acceleration gate only allows T1 Frigates and T1 Destroyers through it. So you won't see any AF, Recons or HACs in them. Some faction frigates admitedly but it is a dangerous game for them. This is because they always land at the same place and if a couple of you are sat at the warp in point with webs, their 7000 m/s Loki boosted speed setup isn't going to help them.

To run the plex though, you have to go and sit on 'the button'. This is an object about 60 kms from the warp in. You have to burn up and get to within 15 kms of it. Once there orbit it for 10 minutes and the plex is captured. You get a faction standing increase and 10 THOUSAND loyalty points (shared between the people on the button at capture time).

It is very easy to solo plexes in quiet systems or at quiet times without any enemy player interference. They are guarded though by NPCs, a minor will spawn about 20 NPC Frigates and Destroyers, they are weak and can easily be soloed in a Dessie without moving off the button. Although if you are low skilled you may have to warp out once or twice or use a long range setup and do a bit of kiting away from the button.

They are also a source of great fights with small gangs or even solo players running each side out of the plex repeatidly and here is the great bit. Every time an enemy FW player dies on grid with you, you get another load of Loyalty points, ranging from 0 to thousands of LP depending on how expensive the kill was, but probably averaging out at around 200-300 LP per kill.

Each plex won gives you between 0.7 and 1.0 % towards the system contested value. If one of your systems is going down, you have to run the same plexes (in an owned system). But in this case they are termed defensive plexes and you don't get LP for them. But you do get standing and the NPC are friendly to you. It is perfectly feasible to (ninja) run even unrestricted majors in a Condor or slasher (even before they were buffed).

Every FW system has a minor, medium and major plex spawning on a 20 minute timer and then there are a load of random ones too. There is no shortage of plexes to run or need to jump half a dozen systems to find one. You just open your onboard scanner, run the system scan (without probes) and bang, 3 or 4 plexes are there. You select one and warp to it, as soon as you initiate warp a beacon appears in space and enemy players may be attracted to it. Alternatively, someone may have already opened the beacon, but not actually be running them. So you warp to 100Km to check out whether people are camping the gate, then do a 250,000 Km 360 degree directional scan to see if anyone is inside. All clear or something you can take, then in you go.

So what do (LP) points make? Well I've always worked on the principle that 1 LP is worth a minimum 1000 isk. But in FW they are actually worth a lot more than that. But here is where you have to be patient. Wait until the Farmers are doing a 'push' which means upgrade the systems. You are waiting for a minimum of Tier 4 (average) across the battle area. This can take weeks or even months before the situation is right to go for a push and when your side gets it, it might only last a few minutes. But in those minutes you make hay. Your 10 Thousand LP can easily net 5 - 10 times that amount. For example a Stabber Fleet Issue costs 180,000 LP at tier 1 but at Tier 5 it costs 11250 LP, they sell for around 60M Isk, which is approximately 5333 Isk per LP. Or roughly one SFI per minor Offensive plex. If you settle for tier 4, it costs 22500 LP or around 2666 Isk per LP (two and a bit minor offensive plexs - 22 minutes sitting on the button).

Do your research, be prepared for the push. Buy the good stuff and then sit on it for a month while your collegues crash the market. Then slip the goods out a little at a time onto the market once prices recover.

Medium plexs allow upto T1 Cruisers and T2 Frigates. Take 15 minutes to cap and pay 17500 LP. But have Cruiser/BC NPCs + little stuff.

Major (Restricted) plexs allow upto T1 BC and T2 Cruisers. Take 20 minutes to cap and pay 25000 LP But have BC/BS NPCs + little stuff.

Major (Unrestricted) plexs allow anything and don't even have an acceleration gate. Take 20 minutes to cap and pay 30000 LP.

I've been in FW for two weeks and I'm sitting on 200K of LP that has come from offensive plexes and killing enemy players and I'm no farmer. More importantly, it has been a real blast.

The disadvantages:

. You will die a lot and sometimes get podded to boot.
. Getting Tier 5 isn't easy, you have to wait to maximise profits and then wait for the right time to sell.
. It would be nice if you run your share of defensive plexes too.
. It is a real click fest trying to cash out when you hit tier 4/5, why of why, can't you select "Stabber Fleet Issue" -> Qty 50 -> Yes I'm sure -> OK. Instead it is "Stabber Fleet Issue" -> Yes I'm sure -> OK "Stabber Fleet Issue" -> Yes I'm sure -> OK "Stabber Fleet Issue" -> Yes I'm sure -> OK...
. Your security status will take a hit. You just can't help yourself!
. You won't be able to enter enemy Hi sec space without considerable difficulty.

Buying plexes works great as well and wont get you banned throughout half of hi-sec.

of how much ISK we're talking?, i see only LP.

Since you're using SFI as a reference I'm assuming you're doing FW for Minmatar? Do you recommend this faction to sign up for FW?

Rather stay with nullsec stuff.

Plenty of ISK to make and you can shoot people yet not be banned from half of the highsec in EvE.

But OP: great post, this should get more people into FW which means more farmers and prices will drop.

pure and simple Risk vs Reward, incursions, FW, Wormholes, all of them give good cash but you have to be a pro e.e

that's for "newbies" which have been playing for at least 3+ months......

I have posted on my main and you only need to look at my BattleClinic record to realise that I am no farmer.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/combat_record.php?type=player&name=Major+Trant

The reason I posted this thread is because I see repeatidly two topics on this forum.

1. How do I fund PvP / How much bank should I build up before PvPing
2. Everytime I step into low or null sec I just get ganked or meet a player with a bazillio SP in an uber ship that tears me a new one.

This is my second time in FW and both times have been an absolute blast. But this second time has I think been my favourite as the new mechanics has resulted in much smaller gangs and cheaper ship engagements. I like small gang/solo, small ship PvP and FW suits my tastes perfectly.

Last night I logged on for a couple of hours and had a blast, got 5 kills without loss and as an aside came away with another 15K LP under my belt. Over the weekend, I lost a Thrasher and clumsily got podded, but achieved 46 kills and around another 70K LP and all this during the period when Minmatar are on the back foot.

To those saying that you can do Incursion for isk, not as a noob you can't. For those saying go to null and rat / plex. Sure I've done that, but that still needs a higher level of SP than a Destroyer requires and it is as boring as watching paint dry and where is the PvP in those activities?

I don't want to have to fund my PvP my doing some chore like ratting or high sec missions. I want to PvP and have it fund itself. Running in cheap ships in FW is both fun, viable and self funding. I T2 pimped out the Thrasher that I lost, it cost OVER 16M isk, the implants cost me another 36M. Shock, horror, now I have to go and grind missions for another 0 seconds to fund my next ship.

One of the kills I made last weekend dropped 168M in loot. As I say, I've made around 90K LP since Friday for just that one Thrasher/Pod loss.

My message to new players should be clear. You can make a difference in PvP in FW, you can fly cheap and have FW fund your losses and most of all you can have a real blast while being paid to do it.

As for those players that just want to farm, go for it, you're not ruining anything for me, just providing targets and cheaper stuff on the market.

Sounds to me like EVE equivalent of a gold rush . Too good to be true?

Theres gold in them there complexes!

Both the Isk price and the LP price drops to 1/16th the tier 1 price at tier 5 or 1/8th the tier 1 price at tier 4.

You're right my calculation was a little off, I was doing the mathes yesterday in anticipation of a possible push this weekend (although I think it more likely to be the following weekend).

The SFI costs one Stabber and one Minmatar UUB Nexus Chip in additional to the LP. Stabbers are currently 6.2M and the Chip is between 3-4M (Sell order prices in Jita), so say 10M Isk total which means the profitability of the LP is 58M - 10M = 48M / 11250 LP at Tier 5 = 4366 Isk per LP. But if you manufacture Stabbers and buy the chips in advance with buy orders, you can improve on that.

Note there is no Isk amount for the built SFI, there is for one of the SFI BPCs, but the other option with the tag instead is cheaper, but neither is better value than the built SFI, just the convenience of not having to get the ordinary Stabbers to the purchase location. Obviously they cost a bomb if you buy them in the purchase station. Ship them in first.

Other items are potentially more profitable, I'm not going to say which, but they do have the drawback in costing less LP per transaction and the click fest to buy them in quantity will be a bit of a chore.

Super cap fight? I thought FW was about small gangs in frigate and cruiser sized hulls. Maybe some BCs?